Tuesday, June 8, 2010

abbie's wedding details


Abbie was a gem of a resource to me when I decided to tackle our flowers.  Here are some of the details that made her wedding day amazing...thanks for sharing Abbie!


Well hello again!  This is Abbie from A Glimpse of the Girl Next Door back to continue our wedding story.
  



When I left off, I mentioned that we made our wedding ours on a budget.  How did we do it?  We took a moment to decide what was important to us... and made sure that stayed our priority.  Even though I'd become obsessed with wedding blogs, we didn't care if our wedding was blog-worthy.  We just wanted to have fun and be married.  Period.

We knew we wouldn't be able to have fun if we spent our entire savings in one day.  So, we rolled up our sleeves and got our hands dirty.  We won our invitations on a blog giveaway just after getting engaged (nine months before the wedding), which saved us a load of money.  No shame in signing up to win, folks!  Unfortunately, the process was an absolute nightmare, leaving us with no invitations a little over two months out from the wedding.  The insanely popular wedding blog where we won the giveaway ended up saving the day for us at the absolute last minute.  In a whirlwind of craziness, we turned the basic invites into something a little more fun and a lot more us.  Instead of hand calligraphy (which I will fully admit is fabulous), we printed mailing addresses directly on the envelopes in a fun calligraphy font and carried that font into other details of the wedding.  We subbed out the plain ivory RSVP envelopes with some green envies that I had lying around from a Paper-Source clearance over a year prior.  It was fate!  We also had custom rehearsal dinner invites created by Etsy seller Cardinal Ink after submitting an Alchemy request. We tied it all together with green and white baker's twine holding website cards that we printed on clean-edge dual-sided business cards.  For months, I had been scoring cheap vintage Colorado and botanical stamps off Ebay to give our plain envelopes a little more personality.  With most guests coming from out of state, we wanted to tie the invites into our Colorado botanical garden theme, and so many people commented on how fun the stamps were.





We knew we couldn't afford a sit-down rehearsal dinner (and didn't want the RD to be nicer than our actual wedding dinner), so we immediately went in search of something a bit more laid back.  It didn't take long for us to agree that the perfect venue was right in front of us... the rodeo grounds where I'd bartended for the past 6 summers.  Because I had worked there for so long, I was able to score tickets for our rehearsal guests at a deeply discounted rate.  The local rodeo is also famous for fabulous BBQ ribs and brisket.  I was a bit nervous asking my bosses for a discount on dinners and drinks for 30 people, but I was absolutely blown away when they decided to gift us the dinners as a wedding present.  I could have cried... okay, I might have for real.  It was a savings of about $750!  You better believe we were thankful.  We didn't want to leave our other guests out of the fun, so we invited everyone to join us at the rodeo after our rehearsal and dinner.  Nearly all of the guests came, and it was truly a blast for everyone... and just happened to be the first time I actually watched the rodeo from the stands!

 


At that point, I was ready to relax, as I had spent the days leading up to the wedding working on our florals!  We ordered a majority of our flowers from Fifty Flowers, and after a few hiccups throughout the week, we actually ended up with some amazing centerpieces and bouquets.  Don't blame me if I'm a bit biased.  (You may remember the post A.Mountain.Bride did featuring them.)  My dad created some vase surrounds out of some of our old fence wood, while other vases were covered in birch back.  I was able to use some leftover birch to form cones filled with hypericum berries to designate family rows during our ceremony.




While the flowers were a huge undertaking, they weren't the only DIY project that helped us save a lot of money on our wedding.  In my next post, I'll show you how we were able to bring all of those projects together to create a wedding that was a true reflection of us.

7 comments:

  1. The Rodeo??? That's so AWESOME!! and what a sweet gift from your old boss!

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  2. Oh gosh, I remember seeing those flowers. They are so beautiful. I love green and white.

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  3. I am so jealous that you had a rodeo rehearsal dinner. Sounds like SO MUCH FUN!

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  4. I didn't realize that you had such trouble with invitations that you won! I'm so sorry.
    The centerpieces are gorgeous, and I'm going to second everyone else on this post--rodeo grounds??? Totally cool. :)

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  5. I never cease to be inspired by the kindness that weddings inspire. I love the thought that your bosses gifted a rehearsal dinner to you, and how special that your dad made your centerpiece containers! This is the stuff that makes weddings truly wonderful!Thanks for sharing!

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  6. You poor thing. That would have been terrible to be waiting and waiting for your invitations! :O I'm so glad that fate stepped in the way and gave you something that you loved.

    By the way, I am very jealous of your rehearsal dinner! That sounds awesome!

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  7. Love the flowers.Beautiful combination of white and green.So adorable.Thanks for sharing and keep posting for more.

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